Hey Ghosts and Hunters,
It’s been a few weeks since our last blog post, but this one is well worth the wait! After our first few months of Early Access, we’ve done quite a bit of learning, thinking, and planning for the future, so we thought now would be a great opportunity to recap as well as to roll out more details on our upcoming roadmap! But first…a quick announcement:
👻MIDNIGHT GHOST HUNT IS CURRENTLY 30% OFF ON STEAM!👻
Now is the perfect time to snag a copy of our 4v4 ghostly prophunt game if you haven’t already!
It’s been quite a journey getting through our first few months of Early Access, and it has been incredibly exciting and heartening to see the community’s (and the world’s!) reactions to Midnight Ghost Hunt. Those of you who have been with us a while might already know that prior to our Early Access launch, we did a number of Alpha and Beta tests. Those were awesome and gave us some early insight into the thoughts of all you players, but Early Access has been on a whole other level!
As a side note, one of the reasons it has been so fascinating isn’t just the excitement of hitting a big milestone - it has to do with the scale of feedback and telemetry we get. With an Alpha or Beta test pool, things are naturally a bit more closed off, but after entering into Early Access, the amount of players and the amount of feedback has been absolutely tremendous. We’ve received thousands of reviews on Steam, and all of you in the community are absolutely buzzing with excellent feedback. This is exactly what we were hoping for, and we hope we can continue to rely on all of you to continue sharing your thoughts with us in the future so that we can make MGH the best it can possibly be.
In a short time, we’ve really managed to cover a lot of ground! We couldn’t have done it without you all here to encourage us and provide feedback, so while we look back with pride at all the stuff we’ve managed to tackle, the community definitely deserves a pat on the back as well.
That being said, there’s lots of ground still left to cover! Which brings us to… THE SUMMER PATCH!
THE SUMMER PATCH
Before we start looking further afield in regards to our roadmap, it’s important to mention that we have quite a juicy patch incoming! Hot off the heels of Patch 10 comes… THE SUMMER PATCH! Alright, maybe the naming convention could use some work, but this is somewhere between a patch and an update.
Here’s what you can expect when you next hop in:
In-Match Challenges - In the Summer Patch, we’ll roll out a fun new way to get shards (which can, of course, be used to unlock gear, emotes, skins, and other fun stuff). When you’re in a match, you’ll now get (totally optional) prompts to perform specific tasks, like “wreck a ghost using the Salt Shotgun”, or “get a headshot using a prop”. If you complete the challenge, you’ll get some extra shards! This is a fun thing we are trying out and plan on expanding it more in the future to include more advanced tasks/strategies.
New Cosmetics & Emotes - All you fashion divas and divos (no, I did not have to look up that word!) who have been clamoring for some new cosmetics, emotes, and victory poses will be pleased to know that your calls have been answered! In the Summer Patch, we’ll be adding the following Hunter skins:
Birthday - Alpha and beta testers may remember this one! New and improved, you can now sport some sweet swim shorts just in time for the summer season.
Jock - a pretty snazzy new football uniform for you to wear. The helmet might not protect you from Ghosts, but you’ll look sporty and intimidating!
We’ll also be adding these neat emotes:
Disco Dance - Ah, ah, ah, ahhhhh!!! Stayin’ alive 🤞 (Doubles as a Victory Pose!)
Bully Dance - look… There’s no easy way to describe this. You’ll get it when you see it. (Doubles as a Victory Pose!)
Hyperventilate - When used ironically, you’re basically telling everyone you ain’t shook (they’ll probably believe you, specifically because this one also doubles as a Victory Pose!)
Satisfactory Clap - Perfectly pairs with the recently added Pioneer skin from Satisfactory!
A New Hero Prop - Little brothers of the world, rejoice! Now you can possess the TV! The latest hero prop will allow you to smack hunters in glorious full HD when you possess the TV. You can find it on School, Museum, and Asylum!
THE ROADMAP
After a great deal of thinking and planning, we’ve put together a look at what we hope to accomplish in the remainder of the year!
Behold, the MGH Roadmap for the second half of 2022!
There’s lots of exciting stuff on here, but let’s start at the beginning! Quarter 3 is the period from the start of July until the end of September. This year, there’s a bit more to look forward to in Q3 than just two awesome months of summer and the start of the changing of the leaves, though. We’ve got big plans!
One of the biggest upcoming features, as you can see in the image above, is the addition of dedicated servers as an option. We’ve started the process of working on this, and hope to have it completed sometime in Q3! Alongside this, we are also working on host migration in P2P hosted sessions. This is a large undertaking from a technical perspective, but both of these features should result in much smoother gameplay and improved stability overall.
Q3 will also have a lot of new content, including a new map, more hero props, more cosmetics like skins, emotes, and victory poses, and of course an updated roadmap to keep you in the loop of future plans and to ensure our timelines are still on track with the realities of development. All things considered, Q3 is looking excellent!
Q4 (the period from October 1st-December 31st) will take us through peak spooky season in the fall, and right to the season of giving. And we’ll be giving all of you some tricks and treats between now and then to be sure! In Q4, we'll be looking to add additional content such as a new map, additional hero props, cosmetics, and... new gear and abilities! We've got some great ideas cooking up, so be sure to keep your eyes on our roadmap moving forward to stay in the loop of when those will drop!
THE Early Access WISHLIST
Looking far out to the horizon, we see in the distance the end of Early Access. That’s a ways off, as there’s still a lot we’d like to accomplish while in Early Access. As you can see from the roadmap above, we want to add several new maps and map variations, lots of great props, new things to do in the game, loads of new cosmetics, gear, and abilities, and maybe even a new game mode that'll keep you having fun with MGH for a long time to come.
As this is still a ways off, we can’t say too much about it just yet, but we wanted to keep you all on the same page with our vision for what’s to come!
One final note, you might see things slow down a bit during July as far as new content/features are concerned. A lot of our lovely dev team is based in Sweden, and it is pretty common that around July/August, basically everyone in Sweden goes on vacation for a few weeks. So while we will still be fixing bugs and making changes, things will slow down for a few weeks while some of the team takes a well deserved break.
If you’ve seen anything here that has you excited, or if you have ideas, thoughts, or feedback to share, there are a few great places for it! We’re always quite active on Discord, and there are great places there for you to send feedback to the team. Additionally, you can shoot us short-form thoughts on Twitter, or just come and hang out for the memes! If your curiosity isn’t yet peaked, worry not!
There will, of course, be more details on all of this in the future. For now, however, I believe it’s time for you to rest your Ghostly or Hunterly peepers and me to rest my weary fingers until the next dev blog!
Until next time Ghosts and Hunters!
Tinny